


Solitary

by Parhelion



Category: Nero Wolfe - Stout
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: cliche_bingo, M/M, Prison, World War II, occult elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-25
Updated: 2009-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even when Archie's in the <em>Offizierslager</em>, Wolfe just has to put in his two cents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitary

Archie Goodwin is not a man who remembers his dreams. This might surprise those who don't know him well, given how easily he can recall and repeat two hours of complex conversation for his civilian employer, Nero Wolfe. But Archie dislikes introspection. He views it as useless, and when not useless, as hazardous. Dimly aware that his dreams may open doors in his mind that he wants kept closed, he never tries to summon up what happens while he sleeps.

All this has to change after he is captured by a retreating squad of German infantry amidst the hedgerows of Normandy.

***

Soon after we wrapped up the Bess Huddleston affair, I registered for the peacetime draft. The chances I'd be called up early were small, but I didn't intend to struggle on the hook if it happened. By October of 1940, I was already prepared to poke a Nazi and ask him where he got the funny name.

Wolfe was grumpier about my ambition than I was. He was perfectly willing to shoot Nazis, or have me shoot Nazis, or have the Chillicothe high school marching band, including the girl who played the glockenspiel, shoot Nazis. But he seemed to view military life as an unpleasant imposition, one just as bad as sending me out into the rain or having me skip a meal.

Back then, I thought he was opening a new account at the Bank of Annoyance to save up against the prospect of carrying his own extra handkerchief and checking his own watch when he wanted to know the time. Now I think he was remembering his service in the trenches of the First World War. His motives didn't matter in the end. During the drawing for the draft lottery, my number was the second pulled out of the jar, and that was that.

A little asking around provided the information that the military's policy was to keep most men doing what they'd done in Civvy Street. As I finished my classification tests at Fort Dix, I wasn't thrilled to contemplate a war spent as an M.P., working alongside a bunch of hick-town ex-cops while we chased away drunken enlisted men from some off-base bordello. Because of that, I might not have been as gentle and forthcoming during my placement interview as I was supposed to be. As a result, high test scores or no, I ended up in the infantry. My new combat branch eventually showed their appreciation for my sterling characteristics by shoveling me into their officer candidate school.

Wolfe claims I would have ended up a field-grade officer in Army Intelligence if my lottery number had been pulled later in the drawing, if I had been forced to wait, if I had volunteered in the end. Maybe. But I wanted combat, and combat I got.

It turned out that combat wasn't like anything else I'd ever done, even counting the people I had already shot as a guard and then as a private investigator. My peacetime profession helped, but battle was still nothing I found entertaining. I'll stick to noting that I made it out of Tunis and Sicily alive, my satisfaction increasing and enjoyment decreasing all the way. I was even less amused to be creased across the skull by a bullet while helping cover a withdrawal by some of my men from a hedgerow too far forward in Normandy, only to wake up and find myself in German hands.

The transit camp they dumped me into after I was captured taught me how things were going to be. I spent twenty days there, all in solitary confinement aside from a couple of medical exams and the brief bouts of interrogation, before they shipped me on to my final prison camp. Later, I learned this schedule was a compliment. I got to skip the torture because I didn't act afraid and the attempts at bribery because I didn't seem soft. Even so, long hours of nothing to do but think too much and eat too little have never been my idea of a good time.

As it turned out, I needed the practice at boredom. My destination was a German prison camp for officers, an _Offizierslager_, or Oflag. The place was both less and more annoying than being thrown into a Manhattan jail cell. On the less annoying side, I had more company, more choices, and more chances to irritate the guards than I did back home. On the more annoying side, I had more company, even less access to hygiene, and my chances to irritate the guards were best done without their realizing they were being irritated. It turned out that Germans were sensitive to wit, once they finally understood it was being employed.

I learned a lot more about solitude when they figured that out at last.

***

Sometimes Archie vaguely remembers wisps of dreams after awakening. Usually he lets them fly free, even in the field when dreams speak to him of home. The first time he remembers dreaming about Nero Wolfe is the first time he tries to cling to his memories.

"You are supposed to be dead," Wolfe tells him, scowling. The office looks right, but Wolfe is a little wrong. He is thinner, obviously so, and his complexion is ivory pale, as if he'd worked on a witness far into the night.

Archie scowls right back. "I can try again if you want."

"Bah. You know better by now. Where are you?"

"Some castle or other. The Germans got me when I was knocked out by a wild bullet and seem to think I want to talk to them, the big stiffs." Archie knows this is all his imagination, but he still wants to open his desk drawer and pour himself a drink from the bottle of rye he keeps in there for emergencies. Instead, he says, "Nice as it is to see the office again, I'd rather be staring at you across the dining room table over one of Fritz's steaks."

"Of course. For the most part, you are a man of sense. Although they gave you a medal even so."

"Great. When the Germans bother to report I'm still alive, maybe they'll take it back."

"Unlikely."

"Well, then, I'll just have to mail it in, along with two box tops, for my chance at an all expenses paid trip to Yellowstone National Park to meet Old Faithful."

Wolfe hoists his eyebrows. "You'll need to survive to do that." He sounds snide about the possibility, which is somehow more comforting than a half hour's worth of reassurances.

"Don't worry. I paid attention during your dinnertime lecture on the Geneva Convention while I was on leave. Also to the one about interrogation, straight from the former secret policeman's mouth."

"Good. I hate wasting my time and effort." Wolfe's lips twitch. "Other than that, I assume you'll be careful. At least bullets should have exhausted their limited charms by now."

"I promise you, they have," Archie says, and wakes up to the sound of a heavy truck, maybe an Opel, revving its motor below him in the castle courtyard. From the quality of light outside his barred window, he can tell it will be at least three hours before he will be retrieved for more questioning.

Archie wishes he had slept longer. His subconscious might have made Wolfe keep talking. The other enemy in this place is boredom, and one thing that even Archie Goodwin never accused Nero Wolfe of being was dull. After going over what he can remember from the dream for later distraction, Archie returns to mentally polishing one of the confidential case reports from his old life, the ones that he'll never be able to send to his publisher, whether he survives to return to Manhattan or not.

The new day drags on.

***

At my Oflag, we imprisoned kriegies had sporting equipment, packs of cards, musical instruments, and play scripts for the amateur theater productions. We had big barracks, each with a single stove, where lots of us could share our deep inner yearnings and toe odor in the unpartitioned space. We had short rations and Red Cross parcels that, cooked together, almost provided enough to eat. We had showers we could use once a week and toilets that didn't always work because the guys who dug tunnels would dump dirt down them. We had the clothes we arrived in, which smelled because we had to sleep in them when the nights got cold.

If you stepped across the wire five feet out from the fence, the guards would shoot you. Most times that wasn't a temptation unless you were going nuts, which a few guys always were, or unless you were drunk on the local moonshine. I never contemplated the wire. Even a fake promise you made in a dream can seem like a good idea after waking.

Mostly I kept my head down and did my chores for the camp's escape committee. It's amazing what a former P.I. can recommend in the way of petty larceny and low-grade forgery. Although they'd shut down their latest attempt at a tunnel after all those Brits from Stalag Luft III got shot for trying to escape, the committee opened it up again when the new prisoners trickling in from the battles across France got too restless. So I was kept busy faking paperwork and hiding contraband around the camp that workers allied with the local resistance smuggled in for us.

Too bad that my head still hurt from the bullet wound every now and then. The pain made it harder to remember with whom I was talking. Not long after I arrived, I said something to one of the German officers that he actually realized was sarcastic. After that, he saw to it that I got enough vacations in our cooler to strain my work schedule.

My vacations were annoyingly dull if not quite dull enough.

***

The solitary cells are of concrete and contain a pallet, a bucket, a high window, and a prisoner. The walls are thick enough to block any communication between cells, and the guards are ordered not to speak.

Archie didn't know how much he relied on conversation for protection until he can't talk any more. So, quietly, he speaks to himself. He repeats poetry learned in school back in Ohio, bits of plays he saw with Lily Rowan or other women, and excerpts from the endless reports he made to Nero Wolfe. He recites pages from his own books. He is careful never to say anything about the war. After a while, he worries that he might talk in his sleep.

Two days of insomnia and his head blazes with pain. He falls asleep at last, curled up tightly as if he could muffle any sleeping words with his own fists.

Wolfe looks up from reading his book. Then he closes it without marking his place, setting it down without ceremony on the table by his elbow. He is seated in the deep, brocaded armchair in his bedroom, dressed in the yellow striped pajamas Archie remembers from morning briefings and sudden crises. He is also frowning.

"Nice to see you, too," Archie says.

"Is something wrong?"

"Aren't you supposed to know that, being part of my dreaming subconscious?"

Something in Archie is relieved when Wolfe's expression drifts toward exasperation. "If the rule of your dreams is to perceive me as a separate individual, no, I wouldn't. And given that you can spend time on this sort of abstruse speculation, I take it I can assume you are well."

"As well as I can be in the cooler," Archie says, and "A cell in solitary," he adds when Wolfe raises eyebrows in inquiry.

There is a pause. "Would you sit? You know I like eyes at a level."

Finding the chair he always used in a corner, Archie shifts it and does so. He eyes Wolfe. Wolfe eyes him. For someone who was starving for conversation, Archie doesn't know what he wants to say.

Wolfe -- or his dreaming mind -- spares Archie from speaking first. "You have been shipped to your prison?"

"Uh-huh. Oflag--" He mentions the number and location of the camp.

"I don't believe I've ever spent time in that region."

"If you ask me, you haven't missed much. Of course, I'm prejudiced, and you always warned me about making judgments without enough facts to back them up."

The creases at the corners of Wolfe's mouth unfurl slightly. "I believe, given the circumstances, you can be forgiven."

Archie studies him. Wolfe is still too thin, thinner even than he was the last time Archie dreamed of him. His silk pajamas hang in loose folds that the waking Nero Wolfe would never tolerate. Archie's eyes narrow. His dream Wolfe also has a new, vividly red mark slashing across his jaw line. "What's that? The new scar, I mean."

The shrug could be measured in fractions of an inch. "There was an incident with a grenade."

"Great. I don't even want to know what it's supposed to symbolize."

"Distracted attention on my part, which I assure you I have no intention of repeating. I see you have done a better job of keeping your promise."

"Sure. No bullets. Just Oflag life, trips to the cooler for grinning without permission--" He hesitates and has to shield his own mouth from imaginary on-lookers before he can make himself continue, "-- and a few jobs for the escape committee."

"Satisfactory. Digging?"

"No. Anyone strong can dig. A little hiding contraband, a little light forgery. It's amazing what you can do with a potato."

"I learned that was the case, given a sharp enough knife and adequate dyes."

"Red's a problem."

"Have you tried using--" Wolfe's suggestion is not one Archie, or any of his fellow prisoners and colleagues in forgery, has attempted. Archie raises an eyebrow quizzically.

Wolfe stops, and Archie isn't surprised that Wolfe heard his unspoken question. When Wolfe says, "The supposed subconscious is theorized to have access to information lost to the conscious mind," the note of tolerance in his voice teeters close enough to condescension that Archie should be annoyed.

Instead, he grins. "That's great, boss." Ignoring Wolfe's outraged glare, Archie leans in closer and says, "Tell me more."

When he wakes up, both his lips and teeth are sore with being pressed hard against the thin and dirty blanket of his pallet.

He still remembers the advice his dream Wolfe gave him.

***

My head wasn't getting any better but it wasn't getting any worse. The notions I'd dreamed up in the cooler worked fine. Otherwise, matters at the Oflag were going downhill.

By winter, the Germans seemed to admit to themselves they were losing. As the snow piled up in the Oflag courtyards, the goons got grimmer and our rations grew smaller. All the new American prisoners arriving from what would later be called the Battle of the Bulge didn't help. The occasional hunger grew frequent, fewer of our Red Cross parcels were delivered, and the temperatures fell to where it hurt to walk around outside. Most of us wore our blankets when we assembled for roll call, still never taking off our clothes. Sometime the fug of the air in the barracks at night was like a tight metal collar around my head.

Even worse, our reducing diet and my fewer chances for physical exercise were having a different effect on me than on most of my fellow kriegies. For the first time since my last leave in England, the elemental Archie decided to perk up. Too bad I was trapped behind barbed wire with several hundred of Uncle Sam's other best boys and not a rogue U.S.O. tour starring the Andrew Sisters, along with a full girl chorus and maybe a native translator played by Hedy Lamarr.

I found my thoughts running down tracks I thought I'd switched them off of back in Ohio. Even in an Oflag, some guys look better than others do. That fact is so basic I've never been able to ignore it. It even gets into my books. But now I was remembering what my train of thought delivered whenever it reached the proper sidings. Trying to cope with the results without privacy, tissue paper, or clean pajamas was no goddamn fun.

I was almost relieved when Hans _der_ Happy Disciplinarian decided I slouched too much at morning roll call and threw me into the cooler again.

***

In winter, the cooler is more of a freezer. Archie would wrap his entire pallet around himself if he didn't so urgently need something between him and the frigid concrete of the floor. He forces himself asleep before the last, watery light dies out of the window, while it is still a little warmer. Even so, it takes him a long time to doze, shivering against the cold.

When he finds himself in a dark room that he recognizes as Wolfe's bedroom, he doesn't hesitate. Walking straight over to the enormous bed, with its footboard of streaky anselmo, he pulls aside the sheets and black silk coverlet to clamber in.

When Wolfe sits bolt upright on the doublewide mattress next to him, it's like a vaguely remembered scene in _Moby Dick_. For a moment, the great yellow whale seems poised to crash downwards before Wolfe says, "Archie."

"Sorry, but I'm cold, and this is my dream."

There's a long pause as something hangs in the balance. Probably Archie is on the edge of waking up back in his frigid cell. Then Wolfe says, "You wish to sleep?"

"I am asleep. Also cold. Also, dirty. No bugs, I think, not yet."

Wolfe's grunt is eloquent.

"Thanks for the tact. I know that wasn't the worst grunt you could have unlimbered. Any more new scars since the last time?"

"No."

"Good. I don't want to know what disasters I could imagine."

"You have my sympathy. For once, I have to regret my adequate night vision. You are much too thin."

"They eat less, we eat less. If I survive this war, I'm sending a lot of checks to the International Red Cross."

"If human effort can prevail, you'll survive."

"Thanks for the kind words. Would you consider lying back down?"

"I take it you want--" Wolfe's voice seems to hesitate in the friendly dark "--an illusion of warmth."

"Sure. There comes a time to reject reality and settle for a good illusion."

"Perhaps." There is a rustle of silk against silk, a shift of the mattress, and a sense of bulk and heat.

Dream Wolfe falls silent. Outside the bedroom window, always open a crack at night even during winter, Archie can hear the faint honk of a New York City taxicab on the next street over. The detail pleases him. Wolfe's warmth next to him pleases Archie even more. He lies still in luxurious enjoyment, feeling himself slowly relax.

Wolfe's deep voice, a low rumble in the dark, is just one more languid pleasure. "These next few months may be the most dangerous of all."

"Don't worry. I won't hesitate when the moment comes."

"I know you won't." Archie hears the release of what sounds like Wolfe's usual bushel full of air. "You implied before that there is a tunnel."

"Already thought of that while I was awake. Even if the digging's not done, it may come in handy during a crisis."

"I agree."

"You can shift closer, you know. I promise not to notice any hints about that little issue of yours I pretend not to know about. After all, it's not as if this counts, or as if you even know I'm making an advance."

"Don't be puerile."

The feel of Wolfe's body all along his back and legs is the finest pleasure of all, better than a good tango, better even than most of the dances that happen after nightclubs are closed. Archie lets himself grin as he takes advantage of every square inch of heat. There are definite benefits to even this thinner, imaginary Wolfe being the size of a baby barrage balloon. It is well worth a little stubble rasp against Archie's neck, and the deep, slow breathing in his ear is comforting.

When he wakes up, Archie pulls his thin blanket close and pretends he can still smell Wolfe's shaving soap and night sweat. He tries so hard that the scent almost seems real. Given time, the arousal -- one more sign of an overstrained libido -- goes away.

Archie doesn't bother pondering the exact nature of the ache all this leaves behind.

***

Sure, I knew I was slowly losing my mind, forced back and forth between too much company and too much solitude. But craziness was common in the Oflag even among guys who didn't have a scar across their scalp to pulse with pain like cold and piercing light whenever the sun flashed too brightly off the ice hanging from the barrack roofs. The only question that anyone cared about was whether you had saved up enough sanity to get you through each dull and difficult day. As the tunnel finally approached the wire, I felt I had. I wasn't tagged to be going out with the first lot of escapees, but at least I was helping with something more useful than my own survival. After all, I was accustomed enough to having a job to need one.

What we heard from the radio that was mostly kept broken apart and hidden, made us pretty certain the Soviet military was closing in on our Oflag fast, winter or not. But, for some reason, our own senior officers hadn't quite believed the Germans would do what they did next, even though the Colonel had ordered us out and walking in the snow for an hour each day, just in case. Still, it seemed as if he was as surprised as the latest, greenest kriegie when the Germans lined up everyone still fit to walk and marched them out into the jaws of a very bad winter, heading them for camps deeper inside the disintegrating Reich.

Not that I'm sure of the details, you understand. Once again, for no good reason I could see this time, I was thrown into the cooler five days before the evacuation.

***

"I'm sorry I smell."

"I'm also sorry you smell."

"Gee, thanks." Archie is so hungry that his hunger has died back to a dull gnawing, but that doesn't matter as much as Wolfe's warmth. He doesn't even care about the stupid, persistent clamor from his groin caused by the heat and pressure of Wolfe's arms around him, the softness of the bed beneath them both. "We'll have to stop meeting like this, by the way. Word on the Bird has it the Ruskies are coming."

"Unreliable saviors."

"You bet. Still better them than spending much more time with the Germans. For some reason, the goons don't seem to like me very much. I wouldn't trust them outside of the wire."

The shift against his shoulder might be caused by a silent chuckle.

"Sure, laugh. You won't be shoved onto some damn boxcar in January."

"If you are wise, you won't be shoved, either."

"I get you." Archie sighs. "Bet I'll be waking up soon. Thanks for the geography lesson, by the way."

"Hopelessly out of date, but landscapes change slower than nations do." Wolfe has been stroking him slowly as they talk, his hand moving leisurely from shoulder to hip. Maybe it feels too good, but no one else will ever know, so Archie has decided not to know, either. In fact--

He reaches down to move the large hand that has paused on his hip sideways. Wolfe's hand slowly shifts to cup him through his uniform pants and then stills.

Archie asks, "Too dirty?"

"Not in any sense of the word." With deftness Archie might not have predicted during this task, fingers are dealing with his fly. "These clothes, on the other hand, are a disgrace."

"I have an entire scenario already written in my mind, one where I pile them up, set them on fire, and dance naked around the flames while singing the first three verses of--" Archie has to interrupt his own words to gasp when the knowing fingers find flesh.

When he awakes afterwards, he is pleased and vaguely surprised that he managed to stay asleep all the way to the triumphant finale. He is more surprised, if also pleased, that he somehow managed not to further stain his single, ancient set of underwear.

He's not at all pleased, and not entirely surprised, to have the door open a few minutes later. Archie is roughly hauled out of the cooler to join the prisoners being assembled for transport. They've been given half an hour to get ready for their march.

Still, as he told Wolfe, Archie knows his moment when he sees it. Taking advantage of the uncertainty caused by his recent absence, he slithers into the crowd to grab the sleeves of his closest colleagues in larceny. Then they all fade away, slinking off from the general confusion of prisoners seizing blankets and Red Cross parcels, while guards make threats, toward the hidden entrance to the almost-finished tunnel.

Something deep inside Archie seems to thrum contentedly through all the chaos.

***

In the end, the only use anyone got out of the tunnel was as a place where a bunch of us hid while most of the so-called able-bodied prisoners were marched out. As I'd said in my dreams, the Reds were chancy but the Germans on a winter road were deadly. I'd forgotten to add the probability of freezing to death to my calculations, but then I'd had no idea that the goons would march both prisoners and themselves a hundred miles across that frozen landscape before they even saw a boxcar.

Sure, it's the duty of a military prisoner to escape whenever he has the chance. Sometimes, though, escaping's just damn well common sense.

The Ruskies also proved to be no treat, but they weren't intolerable and the Senior Officer left behind with the medical rejects was a man of sense. Somehow -- nobody's quite sure what happened -- his letter made it to the American Embassy in Moscow, telling them about the march and the leftover group of invalids combined with escapees who kept trickling back from the march for days. It took all of February, but we were eventually put on a boxcar, sent to Odessa, and then shipped to liberated Napoli. After a couple of weeks of acceptable eating and a good shave, I finally dared to take stock of myself in a decent mirror.

To my surprise, if you ignored the scar that edged out of my hair and onto my forehead, the face that looked back at me was the same as the Archie Goodwin's who had gone off to war. Eerily the same. Except for the eyes, I didn't look like I'd aged a day. After a few minute's study, I shrugged and turned away.

I expected to rejoin my unit, but instead, after my Interview with Recovered Personnel, they promoted me and shipped me stateside to help stiffen one of the new brigades being mustered for the invasion of Japan. In the meantime, though, I got leave.

After I returned to Manhattan, Lily told me that Wolfe had actually telephoned her to let her know I was alive and in prison in Germany and had sent letters reassuring her from time to time thereafter. She'd been sending him grouse from her ranch in Montana ever since, even though neither of them discussed the matter, of course.

When I first saw Wolfe, he had a new scar on his jaw.

***

As he shakes Wolfe's hand, Archie considers the leanness under the taken-in pre-war suit. Otherwise, this thinner Wolfe seems as if he hasn't aged a day. Archie's gaze moves on to the small, paling scar across the jawbone.

He had known-- He had hoped-- Archie grins. "I'm not sure if I should compliment you on looking like hell. The folds of skin are a treat."

Wolfe grunts agreement. "War time rationing is appalling. I could use some meat. Perhaps a rib roast. It seems as if someone could spare a rib roast." As his tone turns petulant, his expression shifts subtly in a way that makes the words nothing but a prop for this scene between them, at least for now. "You look better than I expected."

"Real food will do that for you, even if it's not Fritz's. And I finally got someone to clean out my scar properly, so it hurts less." He makes sure to catch Wolfe's gaze and hold it. "Still, Lily says I'm looking good, even allowing for the uniform. Amazingly like I did when I left."

Wolfe's eyes narrow, but he raises his eyebrows politely. "You wish to discuss this phenomenon?"

"Not now. I'm a lot more interested in dinner."

"I see. A wise choice. Fritz and I have been saving our ration points."

After one of Fritz's best efforts in the kitchen and dining room, they move to the office for coffee, where Archie is allowed to tell only as much as he wants of his stories without the veterans he's long lived with pestering him for more. Bedtime comes.

Archie knows his bedroom will be as fresh and clean as he left it, but he lingers only long enough to take pleasure in the sight before changing into his pajama bottoms and going down the corridor.

Wolfe answers his door at the first knock. Even Archie can't tell if Wolfe's surprised or not, but what he isn't, is displeased. "Yes?"

Moving quickly, Archie kisses him. Then he pulls away to ask, "See what you get for making choices for someone else without asking? Consequences. I remember someone explaining to a green kid from Ohio all about consequences."

"You wish to have your discussion now?"

"No." Archie feels his own eyes narrow for a change. "Not that I won't be saying some words later on the subjects of mysterious visions and imperishable youth, not to mention asking what the hell. Just not right now."

"Nothing has been taken from you that can't be restored."

"Sure, with one exception." Reaching out, Archie wraps a deliberate fist into the half-unbuttoned yellow silk shirt in front of him. Wolfe remains a heavy and hairy man, but-- "I still haven't worked all the chill out of my bones, and you look like insulation."

Wolfe scowls, but he also steps back into his bedroom, letting Archie follow him. "I hope you aren't expecting miracles."

"I shouldn't?" It's nice to see the faint, familiar twitch when Archie hoists the single eyebrow. But he's on leave, so he relents. "No miracles. After all those months, I'm merely tired of solitaire."

Wolfe grunt is almost rudely incredulous, but his lips are very warm. They say what really needs to be said. Without looking back, Archie closes the bedroom door.


End file.
